Tips to Keep Your Mind on the Story this Season

Pencils&Lipstick podcast · Dec 18, 2023

Transcript

Happy Monday, everyone. It's December 18th, 2023. I'm Kat Caldwell, and you are listening to Pencils & Lipstick. This is episode 210, and this will be our last episode of 2023. I think because of the way that the holidays are falling, we will not have one next week.

And I will greet you in the new year with some fun challenges and ideas on how to look at your writing life going forward. But right now, I want to talk to you guys a little bit about what is even possible in in your writing for the next two weeks about as we celebrate the holidays, as we meet with friends and family, as, you know, we probably eat too much and sleep too little. So if you are enjoying the podcast, I would really appreciate it if you'd end the year by sharing it with anybody that writes or wants to write. We are a writing -oriented podcast. Of course, I am an indie author, but I have guests on who are traditionally published. And so we try to focus probably 80 % on indie publishing and what you have to do to become a successful author, but we do not leave out you traditionally published authors either.

Let me fix my hair a little bit. Anybody who wants to see me and wants to see my office and wants to see me try to fix my hair when Zoom is mirrored, you can watch or listen to the podcast on YouTube as well, just in case you didn't know. I keep telling this to people and I still have people saying, oh, I didn't know that. Or maybe I think I'm telling people this and it's just in my head. I don't know. So as the new year rolls in, we have a lot of guests. I know I promised you guys a couple weeks ago, but things have happened and I've had to rearrange schedules. I lost my voice for a few days. And so all the guests are in the new year and it is jam -packed. You are not going to want to miss it. I would encourage you to subscribe on whatever app you're listening to. By the way, if you're listening on Google, that is apparently going away. You're going to want to probably find a new podcast app. But we literally have, I'm looking at the calendar, we have interviews booked with lots of people through March. I have saved like two in which I will talk to you guys personally about my Kickstarter and about a conference that I'm gonna go to that is for publishing. But other than that, it is jam packed full of really interesting people that you're just not gonna wanna miss.

There are so many people out there who are writing and who are teaching in a different way. I work really hard to find people that don't teach the same or in the same way because I know all of you out there are not the same person, right? And we all need to approach our writing differently. I assume a lot of you are like me and which you would love for this to become your number one money maker, selling your books. And so I do, I am also bringing in people who are going to talk to you about how to get on podcasts to talk about your books, how to make graphics or find people who can make graphics for you. All the different options out there in which come with book writing, that business side of it, right? But then a lot of people are also teaching the writing side and whether you want to be indie published or traditionally published, you do have to get that writing done, right? and sometimes this business the business of writing your book alone is not the best option I do have to say it's possible lots and lots and lots of

people write their books all alone but you could probably write much quicker if you seek out some advice some help some mentoring in the beginning yeah of the writing and not wait till the end. You all know my story of being told, you need to cut 40 ,000 words and that is not enjoyable. So if you're going to treat it like a business, sometimes you have to invest the time and the effort and the money, right? So we are, we have tons of people. We have Susan De Freitas coming in. I'm sure lots of you know about her. We have Emily Meyer coming in talking about how to publish a poetry book. So I know not all of you are just fiction writers. We have Book Brush coming in. We have Brook Adams Law coming in. And we have some like authors that you probably don't, haven't heard of. And you know, they're coming out with books and they've come out with several books and now they're hitting the podcast and I think it's always fun to listen to them, right? Listen to their journey. One has published nonfiction a lot and now is venturing into fiction

and that might be you too, right? So to hear their stories and to be encouraged and to see if you can incorporate anything that they've done in your writing. So as we round out this year, I don't know about you, but um today marks the like hit the ground running weeks like these i'm looking at my calendar and yeah we leave for spain tomorrow evening and we get back um on the second and so it is literally like 14 days jam -packed full of family and festivities and fun, and that's awesome, right? That is, like, I look forward to it every year to be with the family over there and to celebrate Christmas. But you might have a lot of things going on and maybe you still have the ambition to get some writing done. And here's the thing that I have learned in the last few years, and I want to put it out there in case it gets you thinking or in case it might help you. When we have this jam -packed moment in our social calendar and we still have the little voice in the back of our head telling us we need to write, you know, a lot of times we'll at story ideas for this, right? It can be very frustrating to not be able to prioritize your writing at that moment. And I have gone through the years and I have experimented with lots of things in which I have demanded time, and that's okay sometimes. And I have given up and forced myself to not have time. And sometimes that is what needs to be done. and now I've sort of settled in the middle.

I don't demand much time, but I grab the time that I can. Now, in doing that, sometimes you feel like, oh, well then I always have to have my laptop ready or my notebook ready, and I don't even know really, like the writing's gonna be a bit chaotic, like I don't have time then to read what I wrote last. So here's what I would suggest to you, And I say it, I suggest it, because it's what I will be doing. Work on the background of your characters. Work on their needs, their goals, and their motivation.

And then think about the plot and jot down notes about cool ideas that probably come to you in the middle of a cocktail party, right? Or like as you're walking home. It always happens in the most inconvenient time. So I have been there in the place, and me, I'm like high on the Achievers. I just want to get the story done. And I'm also an intuitive writer, a pantser, whatever you want to call it. I spend a lot of time seeking out that storyline as I write it. And so it can be very frustrating to not be able to just sit down for a couple hours and pound out some words, right, and just sort of play around with with what's going on. Because my life doesn't and hasn't for the last few months allowed for that, I have been seeking out different things. And so I have four books in my head in which I would really love to just, you know, forget the world and sit down and work on them. And the problem is I'm also working on setting up the Kickstarter for the duology, the Bended duology, which will be coming out in March. I've been working on the podcast. I've had family stuff. I've gotten sick. Oh, so things are not really happening as I want to. And so what I've been working on for each of the four books, which will have four different protagonists, is working on their backstory. Here's what I've sort of come to the conclusion of. I have read a couple really great books in the in the last few weeks as I fly and travel and just, you know, fit that in right before bed. And I've watched a couple things on the plane that I wouldn't normally watch, but somehow grabbed my attention. And I have come to the conclusion that it's best not to have plot holes, but as most people can tell you, as Lisa Krohn will tell you, as John Truby will tell you, the most important thing to work on is your characters. Your characters should not have background holes. They should not have any holes in their needs or wants, and they definitely shouldn't have any holes in their motivation. So your plot might have quite a few holes, but if you're, if you understand your characters so well and what motivates them and what has brought them to the place that they are right now, that will come across to the reader in a way that will keep them engaged because they will want to know what

happened to this character and why they are on this journey and what's going to happen at the end. I am going to use an example that if you know me at all, you'll be like, this is crazy that she even watched this. So I started watching The Last of Us on the plane to Mississippi. I don't usually watch apocalyptic stuff. I don't usually watch virus stuff. I grew up with my older brother watching X -Files and it was like I loved it because I loved watching it with my brother but man the gross stuff is just like I don't like it I'm a very visual minded brain person and if you tell me details about a movie I can dream about those details in my sleep like that's how visual I am, and so I'm very careful about the horrors that I put before my eyes. Let's put it that way. But The Last of Us is, there are some uncomfortable scenes and there's some blood, but it's definitely not as bad as The Walking Dead. It's not as bad as lots of horror out there. So what's very interesting, A, if you're able to watch it, it's a fungus, so it's kind of grouse, like, ooh, fungus, you know, kind of like, and they make people a bit zombie -ish,

right? But again, it's not as bad as quite a few apocalyptic things out there that I have tried to watch and I just couldn't finish it. So now, spoiler, like there's only one season because of the strike, but I think that the one season is actually pretty good and I'm not sure that the second season will live up to the first. So, also spoiler, there are tons of plot holes in this, this, I don't know what it is, series? Tons of plot holes. Like, if you have an analytical mind, you'll, you will start saying, wait a minute, wait a minute, like, how is that happening right now? And why would they do that? And are humans Like, did they progressively get stupider? So there's lots of plot holes. I'm not going to go into details there. And so when I realized, you know, this is like the third episode in, that there are this many plot holes and I couldn't stop with my analytical mind. But I thought, you know what? I still want to understand the little girl. I understand the man, Joel. I understand him, but I want to understand the little girl.

And I sat back for days as I'm cooking or driving or whatever, thinking about how interesting it is that the way that they knew the background of these characters, and then because they knew them, they made certain decisions on when to tell you their background, right? They're very strategic decisions, right? So even if you are an intuitive writer and you're writing out the story, understand that you still have to and should make strategic decisions about your story in the way that it is presented to the reader, okay? And so this is something that you can do as you're at these cocktail parties or as you're, you know, sitting around. You know those times when you're with family where like you're just sitting around? And like everything's fine, but like you're just sitting around. You can start thinking

about this, the strategy behind your story structure. I understand a lot of people out there teach this intuitiveness as the sense of the story will tell you. And I don't knock that because I understand what they're trying to say, but it does end up having to be your choice. And I think that giving up your command over what is yours, the story is yours. You are in control of this story. It is your imagination that's bringing this out. And so to just leave it up to kind of a whim or whatever you kind of think the story is telling you, I think does a disservice to the story within you. I think it deserves you as well because you are as smart as this story, you're the one that came up with it.

And so don't negate the fact that you can figure this out and that there are certain decisions that are a little more strategic. And so I say all this to get back to the more you know your characters, the better you're going to be able to make these decisions about your story. Should the background be told right at the beginning or should you create intrigue and create a character that people root for and then say the background that the reader is intrigued by and can't get enough of because they really want to understand this character and then you finally give them the satisfaction of understanding the character. That is a decision you should make. A lot of us tend to write the background and the backstory right up front, and that's not necessarily the best decision for your book. It's a good decision for you. What's happening is that you are trying to understand your character. You are trying to get to know them like a best friend. But a lot of times that is encouraged to be cut by your editor, and I'm not sure that it should always be cut, what I'm saying is that you need to then step back, take that as a learning process, and then be very strategic about it. And now what you can do in the next 10 days, 14 days, is write the background, however you need to do it, whether it's bullet points, whether it's filling out personality things, whether it's jotting down, whether it's setting the timer and jotting down, maybe it's setting the timer and writing out scenes from their childhood. A lot of people have different suggestions on all of these and they all work. It just depends on you, right? So Lisa Krohn

would tell you to set a timer and to think about the first time that this person encountered betrayal. And you write it out. And honestly, I did that for Bended Loyalty and it worked really well. Did it come up in the story? Maybe as a sentence, but I wrote out probably five pages and I understand my character very well. So it's good advice, right? So it doesn't have to be a scene though. It could be jotting down bullet points. It could be talking into your phone as you go take a walk because you just need to leave your family for five minutes, right? But take the time to get to know your character's background and what's happened to them before page one. This then also goes into their motivations. So if we take The Last of Us, and I know I would talk about the books that I've read, but I'm not sure anyone's read them or as many people have read them and it's not as

accessible as The Last of Us, which I think is on, don't know. I don't know. I got like a trial of the app and watched the whole thing very quickly so that I could then get rid of the app. But find somebody with the app and go watch it. It's a little more accessible. So we know the motivation of Joel. He needs money. It's the apocalyptic world and he wants money. We don't actually really know why money is so important to him and I think they're just allowing us to assume money is important to survive, right? And then it does get to the point where the writers clearly knew that he needed more and so it's kind of a promise that he makes, right? And so then you watch him go from money motivation to love motivation, right? You get to watch that character arc. And the little girl, we know the motivation is she wants to help, you know, she wants to be part of sort of saving the world, do her part, right? She wants to be part of that. And that's her whole motivation. You need to understand your character's motivation. It wouldn't benefit the viewer if this little girl is being told to cross the country with like virus weirdos around zombies and humans who are being the worst of the humans.

If she didn't have a motivation or if she was just like told to do that, because they also created her as quite the rebel, so that wouldn't mesh. But I've seen writers do that in which, well, this is just what you have to do. and they don't quite match the character's personality that they've made with their motivation or they don't give them a motivation. So it's more like the plot is telling them what to do. Figure out your character's motivation. They have to have a motivation for why they get up in the morning. We all have motivations, right? We got to go to work. We got to make money. We got to pay for our housing because we don't want to become homeless. And I got to pay for our kids schooling because my goodness, it took enough time just to get them into that school or whatever it is. Your character needs a motivation for the actual book, not in their life. Do not go through figuring out their life goals and who they want to become. It's the motivation for that book. And they need a goal at the beginning and they need a need. And a need is basically what you see them needing to change kind of psychologically by the end the book. So who do they need to be by the end of the book? And so then you go back to the beginning and you say, okay, who are they now with that gaping hole? So let's go to the last of us.

Joel needs to learn to let down his offenses and allow himself to love again and not love sense, in the romantic sense, in the fatherly sense, and to give up a little bit of his past and the grip that he has on it. That's his need. And he definitely doesn't know that from the beginning. I mean, he's an adult, so he might like, yeah, everyone, you know, if I were to be rational, that's what I need. But he's not going to do it until the story happens. Okay. So he has a need and they know it perfectly well, and he doesn't know it. The writers know it perfectly well. And he has a goal to get this little girl across the country, full stop, grab some money. And he doesn't really even know what he's going to do after that. That doesn't matter to the story at hand. Okay. Again, a couple of little plot holes, but it doesn't even matter because you want to know. What is he gonna do? Especially when he starts like hitting up the plot and he has these sort of pivot points, right? Because you want some plot twists and pivot points. Okay, what is he actually gonna do? Because I haven't seen him change yet. Like when's he gonna

change? Yeah, I watch things with an editor's eye at this point. So I encourage you to watch that or watch your favorite Christmas movie and try to figure out their their need and their motivation and see if they did it right and try to sit back and think did this writer really know their background and then how did they present it to me in a way that wasn't overbearing but that I understood it intuitively as the reader or the viewer and didn't need a whole lot of explanation. Now sometimes you do need explanation. Sometimes you need that story told, you know, that you've sort of insinuated but haven't told yet. That's fine. That is one of the strategic decisions that you have to make about your book, right? So in this next two weeks, ten days, whatever you have, give yourself a little bit of grace, possibly, and don't think that you have to write full out scenes for your book, but give yourself time and space to think a lot about your character. Think about their goals, their needs, their motivation, who they are at the beginning, who you want them to be at the end. A lot of you know who you want them to be at the end, and the way that you go backwards and don't write them as the same person. This is where people say, don't make your character perfect. That's what happens is you know who you want them to be at the end, and so you write them the entire way that way, and that's not what we want. You figure out, if you know who they are at the end, you take out a piece of them from the beginning. Maybe they're the really nice guy who has decided to take care of his family. Well, you take a piece of them out at the beginning, and he's kind of a jerk who only cares about his career, all right? I know it hurts, right? Because you love your character, but they have to have some sort of growth. And so spend this time thinking about your main character and also your side characters, and have a notebook around or have your phone around and jot down notes. Record. A lot of times it's easier to find that space to just record really quickly. Here's an idea. What if this? What What that? What if they were like this? What if this happened? How would they react?

Whatever comes to your head, try to get it recorded under your phone or jotted down and just give yourself that space to get to know your character. This time of Christmas is going to go by pretty fast. And if your life is anything like mine, demanding the space to sit down and write, you're probably not going to get the time that would be satisfying to you. And so what might be more satisfying and more productive is spending this time to get to know your characters. Does that make sense? So let me know what you think about that. If you do that, let me know how it works out for you. I do think even as intuitive writers, spending time thinking about your characters is going to benefit you greatly, and it will probably shave off a little time on how long it takes to write the story. So that is my episode and my challenge for you, the last one for December 2023, the last one for 2023, actually, the whole year is gone, guys. Merry Christmas to everyone, Happy New Year, happy holidays. I hope that you have a lovely season. I hope that you have a lovely New Year's and I will actually see you with some new challenges and new ways to sort of breathe in and breathe out and start anew in 2024. It's unbelievable. I'll see you guys in a few weeks.